Lewis Hine

Child labour photographs Lewis Hine photographed working children in mills, mines, fields and factories, and his pictures were put to work as evidence rather than sentiment. They provided evidence to support legislation limiting child labour, and, influenced in part by them, Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act in 1916, the first federal attempt to regulate it, though the Supreme Court struck the act down two years later. That route from camera to statute makes them a model for photography used as documentation, and the faces in them still carry the argument better than any statistic.